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Sunday, December 7, 2014

Technology Predictions for 2015: Trivial, Over Estimated and Interesting

Picture source: Wikipedia

It is an annual ritual: predictions for next year. After a year, two years or 5 years you discover that some of the predictions were right, some were wrong and nobody is sure if other predictions were right or wrong. 2015 is not an exception. Recently I read two article about IDC's predictions. The two articles describe the same predictions. The articles phrase differently the same predictions. I will refer to the first article titled: IDC's top ten predictions for 2015. However, the first article omitted an interesting point about Internet of Things Vendors. I will refer to what was written in the second article titled: IDC: top 10 technology predictions for 2015. No one, including me, could be sure to which category (right, wrong, unknown) a prediction will fail.I divide IDC's predictions to three groups:1. trivialI am not going to discuss trivial predictions such as "Wireless data growth", "Pablets will rise", "Clod Services", "Big Data and Analytics", "Security and 3d printing", "Cloud services will become the new data center". Many others write about them. You can read what they write. All of them will probably belong to the category of right predictions. The only exception is the last prediction in the list: "Cloud services will become the new data center", which probably will belong to the unknown category.2. Over EstimatedThe list of trivial predictions includes only the first half of the prediction "Pablets will rise". I think that the second half ("wearable will underwhelm") is over estimated. It is more a buzzword than mature Technology. I agree with IDC that "wearables will seen an explosion in innovation that will not translate to market value yet". But will it ever translate to market value or will it end like Virtual Worlds? will Google Glass be another Second Life?As far as Apple Watch and similar initiatives are concerned, I am skeptic. The new world is full of multi-function devices instead of single function devices. Not all of them will be successful devices. The Pablets are multi-function devices whose success is almost guaranteed. The young generation usage of watches is limited. Many of them do not wear a watch at all. Almost All of them carry Smart phones anyway. It is possible to divide wearables to two categories: stand alone and connected (via Internet). The connected are more promising. But aren't they a case of broader category: Internet of Things?3. InterestingIDC's predictions not mentioned in previous sections could be classified as Interesting.I will not discuss "The 3rd platform will become industry specialized" prediction."New Technology will take over the market""Nearly all the spending growth will be focused on 3rd platform technologies. 2nd platform technologies (PCs) will continue to see decline spending". Most of the new development is for Smart Phones and Tablets. It is trivial and well known. These devices gradually will replace many of the Personal Computers. What is less trivial is the fact that Information Technology is far from being Mature. Expect a lot of changes in future years. Phil Morphy's Winchester Mystery House analogy is still relevant as it was more than 10 years ago.The Internet of ThingsThe illustration in the beginning of this post depicts the Internet of Things (IOT). You can guess (correctly) that I think that this technology is significant and important.In my opinion it is a revolution. I do not know if IDC's Internet of Things prediction is right for 2015, but I am sure that if it is not, it will be right prediction for 2016 or 2017 or 2020.In my opinion IOT is a fascinating new technologies based on Hardware (not limited to traditional Information Technology Hardware) , Software and Artificial Intelligence. It could change our life in the future and it will be a very large market. Successful vendors' revenues could be high. Google Car is not Google Glasses. It could turn into a significant growth engine.IOT vendorsIDC predicts that some of the traditional IT vendors will form "an IOT solutions company". Possible candidates for forming an IOT solutions company are IBM, Intel and Cisco.

It is not surprising that these vendors are not pure Software vendors. They have significant Hardware Business Lines. Those three vendors are not significant players in the Pablet Hardware market.Intel (Intel inside PCs) missed the promise of Intel inside mobile devices.It could miss the IOT opportunity if it will focus in wearable devices.I do not know much about Cisco's IOT efforts. I think that IBM could be successful in the IOT market."massive Growth in China"According to this prediction "China Will experience skyrocketing influence on the global market in 2015".Expect to buy more Chinese products. Expect new or local Chinese companies as major Global Market players.Will the Chinese influence change the Global IT Culture if the prediction will be realized? I do not know. But if it will change the IT Culture, it will be a fundamental change in Consumers practices.

2 comments:

IBM, Intel and Cisco aren't significant players in phablet market. Their partners, however, are. IBM and Apple e.g. renewed their cooperation but we didn't see any outcome, yet. If both gigants put in their knowleges in creating and mining future technologies and markets then they are working on the next significant technological and social breakthrough, once again. I'm sure it's about internet of things and cognitive computing. Applewatch might be a stepstone in this direction.

I don't use wrist watches. There are so many watches around in computers, phones, on walls and in other signal systems that I don't need one. But I'm scanning the market for a suitable smartwatch which keeps the connection between me and my incomming data as close to my body as possible. I'd be comfortable with a pure connection device instead of a full featured smartphone if my wrist watch was a suitable interface.